U.S. Foreclosures Drop By 20 Percent Year-Over-Year In January

CoreLogic released its January National Foreclosure Report, which provides data on completed U.S. foreclosures and foreclosure inventory. According to CoreLogic, for the month of January 2014, there were 48,000 completed foreclosures nationally, down from 59,000 in January 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 19 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures were up 11.8 percent from the 43,000 reported in December 2013. As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.

Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 4.9 million completed foreclosures across the country.

As of January 2014, approximately 794,000 homes in the United States were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory, compared to 1.2 million in January 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 33 percent. The foreclosure inventory as of January represented 2.0 percent of all homes with a mortgage, compared to 2.9 percent in January 2013. The foreclosure inventory was down 3.3 percent from December 2013, representing the 27th month of year-over-year decline.

“We are recovering, but we’re not there yet,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “For every completed foreclosure, there are 954 mortgaged homes in non-judicial foreclosure states and 896 mortgaged homes in judicial foreclosure states. Although this is a big improvement relative to the height of the foreclosure crisis, a healthier ratio would be one for every 2000.”

“The painful tide of high foreclosures continues to recede as fewer borrowers are losing their homes and states are working through their shadow inventory,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “We are entering 2014 with less than a million homes in the foreclosure inventory. We expect to see continued progress in the months ahead, but the judicial foreclosure states will continue to lag the rest of the country in working down their backlogs of foreclosed properties.”

Highlights as of January 2014:

►The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in January 2014 were Florida (116,000), Michigan (52,000), Texas (39,000), California (38,000) and Georgia (35,000).These five states account for almost half of all completed foreclosures nationally.

►The five states (including the District of Columbia) with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in January 2014 were District of Columbia (60), North Dakota (427), Hawaii (526), West Virginia (543) and Wyoming (732).

►The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Florida (6.4 percent), New Jersey (6.3 percent), New York (4.8 percent), Connecticut (3.4 percent) and Maine (3.4 percent).

►The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Wyoming (0.4 percent), Alaska (0.5 percent), North Dakota (0.6 percent), Colorado (0.5 percent) and Nebraska (0.6 percent).

Source – Mortgage Professional

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